tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Mar 29 10:49:02 2004

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Re: Using object prefixes with "intransitive" verbs

David Trimboli ([email protected]) [KLI Member] [Hol po'wI']

From: <[email protected]>
> I recall something about the way such verbs work when both a direct
(locative) object and an indirect (again, locative) object.  Example:
>
> Hovmey vIleng.
> "I travel to the stars."
>
> He'Daq Hovmey vIleng.
> "I travel to the stars along the path."
>
> Am I remembering correctly?

Speaking syntactically, and ignoring subordinate verbal clauses and
adverbials, Klingon has the following:

Subject - noun, noun phrase, or pronoun (sometimes elided) that comes after
the verb
Verb
Object - noun, noun phrase, or pronoun (sometimes elided) that comes before
the verb
Header - noun, noun phrase, or pronoun that comes before the object.

In TKD, only subject, verb, and object are mentioned -- "header" is a term
first used by Captain Krankor.  It refers to all of those words that come at
the beginning.  There are few guidelines for ordering words that aren't
subjects, verbs, objects, or subordinate clauses; words expressing times,
for instance, tend to come before other "header" words.

There isn't a syntactic position for "indirect object"; rather, nouns with
/-vaD/ often fill this role semantically, and end up in the syntactic
position of header.  Thus:

yaSvaD taj vInob jIH
I give the officer the knife.

jIH - subject
taj - object
yaSvaD - syntactically it's a header, semantically it does perform the role
of indirect object

I'm not sure if the concept of "beneficiary" equals the concept of "indirect
object"; I suspect it doesn't exactly match.  For instance,

wo'vaD jagh vISuv
I fight the enemy for the Empire.

In English, the indirect object typically comes before the direct object.
"I give the officer the knife" has "the officer" as the indirect object and
"the knife" is the direct object.  The sentence can be reworded as "I give
the knife to the officer," in which "the knife" is still the direct object,
but there is no indirect object syntactically -- rather, there is a
preposition, "to the officer," whose object happens to fulfull the semantic
role of indirect object.

If Klingon -vaD were identical to English indirect object, I would expect to
be able to translate this as, "I fight the Empire the enemy."  This doesn't
work.  Thus, while there is certainly a lot of overlap, I don't think
Klingon -vaD necessarily equals English indirect object.

Now to actually get to your question.  What you're thinking of comes from
HolQeD 7:4, which DloraH just posted an excerpt of.  The idea is that
certain verbs, specified by Okrand in the interview, have as an object the
destination of the motion mentioned by the verb.  {jaH} "go," for instance,
include the notion of going somewhere.  You don't include a syntactic header
with a locative suffix on it to indicate the somewhere; you just make the
somewhere the object of the verb.

If you use one of those verbs and it DOES have a syntactic header with a
locative suffix on it, the meaning is that you are performing the movement
action while you're in or at the location.

Duj vIjaH.
I go to the ship.

DujDaq jIjaH.
I go (somewhere unspecified) on the ship.

DujDaq yuQ vIjaH.
I go to the planet on the ship.

You can even say

DujDaq vIjaH
I go to the ship,

but the -Daq is already understood and is redundant.  You're putting a
locative marker on a noun that must be locative in meaning anyway.  You
cannot say *{Duj jIjaH}, because the locative concept is not present in the
header syntactic position.

So, you've basically got it right, though your terminology is off.  It's
simply this: with a specific set of verbs, the correct object is the
destination or route or starting point, and therefore any additional
locatives you stick on the sentence elsewhere cannot be the destination,
route, or starting point.

SuStel
Stardate 4243.0

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